I did not take to this book at all but it wasn't actively bad, so I slogged right through it, and while I can now honestly and completely review it, my opinion is more negative than it might have been had I just bailed when I realised I wasn't getting much out of it. It's your classic catch-22 situation. Incompletely negative incomplete review or completely negative complete review? It's a difficult question because when you get down to it nobody flipping cares.

So there's this guy and he goes off looking for this other guy and there's bad guys and they're after this girl and they killed her parents and she's sad and distraught and suddenly she's captured and going to be tortured, oh noes! But the first guy saves her! Yays! But the bad guys are after them both now! Oh noes! And how does it tie in to the second guy and these other guys we haven't even mentioned yet but who are in the book doing stuff? What, you want the whole plot served up on a platter? Slog through the damn thing yourself.

in fairness, it's not even that bad. It's quite well written for the most part, and the writer knows the South and knows his music and it comes across. He also knows how to put together a lead character who is sort of down-at-heels but intellectual but physical but doggedly honest but smart-alecy but likes blues music but is friends with black people but likes his women but is kinda lazy except when it comes to rescuing damsels and protecting those he loves which includes lots of black people but who has a particular black friend who is bigger and smarter and more of a pro than he is, and it all ends up looking like some bizarre inhuman indentikit portrait of a type of PI hero rather than an actual human being, veering dangerously near self-parody, particularly when he chooses to be rude for no good reason and we're supposed to find it charmingly cocky. The heroine isn't a whole lot better, being less a character and more a collection of emotional responses to various, usually traumatic, stimuli.

Supporting characters have it better. The surrogate black parents are types, but boldly drawn. The big tough black friend is the same, but every time he turns up the book starts to remind me, unfavourably, of Hap and Leonard, Joe R Lansdale's pair of good-guy ne'er do wells. The psychotic hitman who thinks he's a conduit for Elvis and the narcissistic con-woman branching out into murder are interesting, but not THAT interesting, and though the writing is, as I said, usually pretty good, action scenes aren't executed terribly well and the big climactic shoot-out is lamentably devoid of suspense.

I just realised I went and automatically gave this five stars. What the heck, I don't really like the star rating system anyway.

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I've been a fan of Ace Atkins for a long time - years before he took up the pen. His Sports Illustrated cover was placed in my son's crib in 1992. But his writing is uniquely Southern and fascinating to me to read. His ex-football player characters are interested and fun, and his villains sharply drawn and memorable. Enjoyed the story -- okay, it wasn't completely believable, but I did enjoy it. Wish I could eat some of Loretta's cooking! Thanks, Ace, for the ride. I hope to read more of Nick's adventures. ( )